


Tumors

by zombiescratch



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Body Horror, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-11-21 18:04:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11362770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zombiescratch/pseuds/zombiescratch
Summary: Gabriel explores the side effects of his newfound immortality.





	Tumors

Ironically, ever since he’d died, no part of his body would stop fucking growing. It was useful when he was injured. He’d grown back flesh and bone more times than he could count, and he ignored how it came back wrong, like black jelly underneath his superficially human shell. 

In the beginning, when his body was clinging to life, he hadn’t noticed the additional side-effects to.. whatever it was that Ziegler had done to him. He didn’t even notice after he’d stabilized and returned to “life as usual” until it started getting weird. 

Every day he found himself asking if he’d forgotten to shave that morning. By the time evening rolled around, it would be like he had half a beard coming in. It took him probably longer than it should have to find it truly bizarre, though, and he only really figured out something was wrong when his freshly-shaved head ended up a mop of curls not much more than a week later. 

He knew his brain had to be fucked from dying, so maybe his perception of time had gotten fucked too. But after a few weeks of obsessively marking every passing day, he reached the conclusion he’d met the first time around: his body was growing at an advanced rate. 

That much was already pretty clear from his recovery (was it “recovery” when it was from death? or just blasphemy?), but he didn’t think anyone had factored in what his body would do once it stopped finding things to grow back. 

It was mostly just annoying, at first. If he didn’t clip his nails every couple days, they became talons. He had to re-shave his head every couple weeks or his hair just became unruly. He established a schedule which, as much of a pain in the ass as it was, was manageable. “Life as usual” could go on. He didn’t have the time to ponder the inner workings of his body as it was now, but he could at least carry on with what he had to do. 

Then came the pain. 

It started as a dull ache when he was long between missions. He thought he must be restless, not working for a while when his life had been all flash fire and back-to-back battle for years. His jaw ached hard enough that he jokingly thought maybe it had healed wrong at some point, and he’d have to break it himself to get it to heal back again. 

He didn’t break his jaw, and it was “life as usual” again, but with vicodin. 

When he noticed his extra teeth, it was because his mouth felt unusually full one morning, like his gums had swollen under his tongue. He almost broke his ass falling back when he checked his mouth in the mirror and found what he could only describe as baby teeth lining the inside of his jaw. 

He didn’t know what to do, so he hid it. He was long gone from Ziegler and he couldn’t afford any appearance of weakness, so he just kept his mouth shut (ha) and went on. But the teeth kept coming. 

It seemed to slow down when he had missions, like his body didn’t want to waste its energy on extra teeth when it had more exerting things to do. But slowly, surely, his mouth filled, sharp and painful, and he didn’t know what to fucking do. When teeth started to grow on his fucking tongue, he’d had enough. 

He had a few drinks, alone, and when he felt whiskey-soaked enough to face the mirror, he grabbed his pliers and stumbled to the bathroom. 

The anticipation ended up being more painful than the process. It was somewhere between plucking hairs and ripping teeth out of his fucking skull, but after the fear of the first tooth (a canine, in the middle of his tongue, far too big), it became like a chore. He developed a rhythm of setting a tooth in the mouth of his pliers, jiggling a little, and finally freeing it to plop into the bowl of his stopped up sink. When he was more sober, he realized that even if these things looked like teeth, they were superficial. They weren’t embedded in bone, and they didn’t have their own nerve endings, but that didn’t make it feel any less unsettling to see the vast holes left by their roots. 

When he was done, his mouth felt.. tender. Like someone had pulverized his gums and tongue with a meat tenderizer, but the pain was strangely faint. He had to stop looking, though, because the holes, even though he could see them starting to heal in the mirror, they felt like they were boring right back into his eyes. 

He decided to just pass out. He left the teeth in a pile in his sink-- he didn’t want to look at how many there were, or how his blood was still black after all this time-- and he stumbled back to his bedroom. He wondered if it would happen again. When it would happen again. Or when he’d find out the next fucked up thing his body was doing. 

But first he needed to figure out what the fuck to do with the literal mouthful of teeth in his sink.

**Author's Note:**

> i've never really posted my writing online, but i thought i might start! thanks for reading the first thing i've uploaded; i would love any and all feedback <3
> 
> you can find me on tumblr at my [personal blog](http://legalizevore.tumblr.com/) and my [art blog](http://zombiescratch.tumblr.com/) :)


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